The Trojan Horse by Hammond Innes

Author:Hammond Innes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1940-10-16T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEAD ON, SEWER RAT

Sudden darkness is frightening. Few people ever experience the real horrors of the darkness. I don’t mean the darkness of a room when you are fumbling for the light. I mean the darkness that shuts down on you like blindness and you have no power to control. The darkness in that vault was complete and utter. There were no windows or ventilation shafts through which even the faintest glimmer of luminosity could penetrate. It closed in around me, and everything was blank. It was as though my eyes had been walled up. And in that darkness I felt stifled, as though I had been buried alive. The mood of sudden inexplicable confidence in which I had addressed Sedel was gone. I remembered only his final words.

He had said I would go mad. And I knew he was right. The mere thought of that foul box made me clench my teeth to control my hysteria. I knew I could not stand it. As I stood in the impenetrable darkness of that vault, I found I was shaking like a leaf. Then the blackness all about me seemed to close in and I found my way to the wall to convince myself that I was not bounded by limitless darkness. The feel of those cold smooth stones was almost comforting. I think I am no more of a coward than the next man and darkness did not usually hold any terrors for me. But I had never known darkness such as this. It was black and with no change in shade anywhere. It pressed down relentlessly on my wide, staring eyeballs as I searched it.

And then I suddenly remembered my fountain-pen torch. I kept it in the breast pocket of my jacket for use in the blackout. It was still there, and in an instant its pale light flooded the vault. There was my coffin, shining black against the dungeon grey of the walls. I crossed to the vault door and tried it. It was an old iron-studded affair, and, though I shook it with all my strength, it held as firm as though it were a part of the wall. And then, as I leant against it, I noticed a plate of food lying on the floor. Evidently Sedel had brought it in and in the heat of the moment had forgotten to draw my attention to it. There was a roll and some ham. I seized upon it hungrily.

I have never eaten a more peculiar meal. I sat cross-legged on the floor of that vault with the plate on my lap. The monogram JL printed on the plate filled my heart with longing for the commonplace humdrum world somewhere above me. Yesterday, maybe, this plate had been used in a Lyon’s teashop. Now the last meal of a doomed man was being eaten off it. I have not often enjoyed a meal so much, for I was hungry. They had provided me with a knife and fork.

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